This is why I am not doing Dry January this year

I am not embarking on Dry January this year for a number of reasons.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

It would be something of a futile endeavour as during the first week of the month alone I took part in the Twelfth Night revels in Hastings organised by the Albion pub.

It involved me playing the part of St George in a traditional Sussex mummers play.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The version of the seasonal play we perform was collected from the recorded memories of an old boy who lived in Hollington in the 18th century, when Hollington was a country village like Crowhurst, rather than being subsumed by the urban sprawl of Hastings and St Leonards.

Dry January SUS-220124-133322001Dry January SUS-220124-133322001
Dry January SUS-220124-133322001

It features characters like Old Father Christmas and The Turkish Knight as well as sword-play, death and resurrection. Drinking plays a part in this, exemplified in the closing lines of the rough play where a Doctor character declares ‘I have a hat. Well fancy that! If you put some money in here. I can buy the boys some beer!’

On the first Saturday of January I took part in another Sussex tradition at the Robin Hood pub at Icklesham, just outside of Hastings; that of wassailing the apple trees. It involves leaving a tribute of bread soaked in cider, on the bare winter branches of apple trees, as a tribute to the birds, as well as making a loud noise to scare off evil spirits and ensure a good crop of apples the following autumn. A big part of the ceremony is drinking hot spiced cider from the Wassail Bowl.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Aside from these seasonal shenanigans, it is exactly at this time of year that our local pubs and hostelries need supporting, particularly with the reduced Christmas period many experienced, seeing cancelled bookings.

One of life’s great simple pleasures for me is to sit by a roaring fire in a quiet pub, reading a book with the gentle hum of conversation in the background. January is one of the best times of the year to enjoy this.

I also dropped into family run Hastings micropub The Jolly Fisherman to sample their Dark Beer Festival earlier this month.

They had some stunning beers on, including an imported Imperial Rye Stout from Sweden, brewed with caraway. Sensibly the pub was offering stronger beers in third of a pint measures, which could be leisurely sipped over an hour by the log-burning stove.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It seems to me that, lately, there is a certain commercial exploitation of the Dry January phenomenon, a profiteering from good intentions. Take for example the big push on non-alcoholic beers and pseudo spirits. Very often the prices exceed their alcoholic counterparts. One glossy food and drink magazine was promoting an ‘elegant non-alcoholic aperitif’ for £27.50 for a 70cl bottle. In the same way that a commercially produced sparkling mineral water is considerably cheaper than a can or bottle of beer, non-alcoholic beers and spirits should reflect this.

Yes, the exotic, non-alcohol concoctions are no doubt more expensive to produce than mineral water, but they shouldn’t be more expensive than their alcoholic equivalents, especially when you consider that up to a third of the price of the harder stuff is alcohol tax. While choice is always a good thing, the boom in non-alcohol equivalents smacks of opportunism and profiteering.

Having said all this, I do admire those undertaking Dry January, for many good reasons and wish them well in their endeavours.